I blame myself, I continue as before
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: Sam does not think to hold it against him. Toby, on the other hand – Will thinks it entirely possible that Toby will blame him for this for the rest of his life. Will, blame, impostor syndrome, and fitting into the spaces other people left. S4


**Title:** I blame myself, I continue as before  
**Fandom:** The West Wing  
**Characters:** Will, Sam, Toby  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** Drama  
**Length:** 1,800 words  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to Sorkin and Wells.  
**Spoilers:** Set in S4, from Inauguration Part I through to Red Haven's on Fire, with references to episodes before that.  
**Summary:** _"Sam does not think to hold it against him. Toby, on the other hand – Will thinks it entirely possible that Toby will blame him for this for the rest of his life."_ Will, blame, impostor syndrome, and fitting into the spaces other people left.

* * *

Will wonders if Toby will still be blaming him, years from now, when Sam is President. 

There is, he can admit to himself, in an office whose windows are covered in the face of the man he has apparently wronged, a certain humour in this. It's a little funny. Sam is the one stuck in California in a race he can't win, the one for whom blame should come easily, with no doubt who it should be aimed towards. And yet, bar the occasional joke borne of hysteria, Sam does not think to hold it against him.

Toby, on the other hand – Will thinks it entirely possible that Toby will blame him for this for the rest of his life. For taking Sam, or for taking Sam's place, or for being the one who was able to make him leave. Who had not known anything about the man, really, save that he was a great writer and a good man and the President's go-to-guy on social issues and lost causes. He had known just enough to say the right things. To get a name to tell Mrs Wilde, to get them to pay attention in Southern California. To pull Sam away from the job he was made for, from the people he loved, back into the home that had despised him and a race he couldn't win.

Sam had punished Will by giving him the opportunity of a lifetime, the place that would be Sam's own if Will had not intervened. Now, if Will had known Toby Ziegler a little better, maybe it would have occurred to him that actually this _was_ punishment. But he does not believe that Sam would ever have meant it that way. There are days when he thinks that he knows Sam better than anyone except maybe Elsie. That it was more than chance, and a happy humour, that made him talk to the guy from the White House as though they were already friends. Albeit friends that were in complete disagreement. But he had known what to say, had known Sam even then. Except that maybe it isn't quite _knowing_ Sam. He cannot match the stories of sometime ferocity, of the strength behind that brilliant smile, to the sweet impetuosity with which he was given Sam's name.

Because that is clearly where the problem is. Will is a good writer, he is bright, and sometimes funny, and he and Sam had been close enough in policy that Sam has taken over the campaign Will was running. But he is missing something, because he can see that they are too. Toby most of all. Will is quiet, and works in the hallways where he will not be noticed, rather than intrude on the holy of holies. And then he is loud, and takes his case to Toby with the facts and figures that the other man so drowns his speeches in. He tries rhetoric, and he tries history, and none of it brings him any closer to finding the missing piece.

-

"Were you punishing me?" he asks Sam. "Are you just really passive aggressive and this is your way of punishing me?"

"Punishing you for what?"

His knee aches where it had banged into the crossbar of a bicycle, but Sam is no more responsible for that purpling bruise than he is for the shrieking sense of impostor that Will gets walking these halls.

"Will?"

"It doesn't matter. How's the campaign?"

"Are you telling me you haven't been following the press?"

"Maybe I want to hear how you tell it."

"Will," Sam answers softly. Because he can hear something to fix, and does not know what it can be. It does not occur to Sam that these people - his friends, his partners - would be anything less than hospitable to the one Sam has sent in his place. He does not realise – little brother – that he is precious, and Will has taken him away.

Sam talks to him as though they are equals. Not since those first meeting, when Sam asked him to close down the campaign, has he done any different. Will is not a charlatan to Sam, is not the lesser body filling his space. Will is just a guy who knows California, who ran a good campaign, and is looking after Toby. Sam thinks they are equals, and when he tells Will that piece of information that will give him a line into Toby's psyche - will give him a route in if not the trump card - that is all he is doing. Bringing Will up to his level.

The next day, when Will goes to Toby and tells him about the State of the Union and government as a force of good, he knows that Toby hears Sam on Will's lips.

-

The first time Will thinks Toby looks at him with blame completely absent is the day he broke the window. Toby looks at him through the hole where glass was, and for the first time Sam is not hanging between them. For the first time he doesn't stop to wonder if this is something Sam would have done, or wouldn't have, because for the first time Toby does not look as though he had expected Sam to be there.

-

Toby says, again, "I blame you completely."

"_I regret. I apologize. I blame myself. I continue as before_," he quotes blithely. Meaning Sam and the President both. Sam is in California losing an election that one day he will win, and the President is risking his 100 days to help a country that needs help. It's his fault that Toby is without his partner, and perhaps his fault that they are rewriting foreign policy in the three days before Inauguration, and he really doesn't care that much.

"Meaning?" Toby asks.

"I really don't care that much."

"Will!"

"This is right, Toby." Holding that in front of him like a sword. Right and true beats blame. He was sitting in his office last night and he spoke to the President and now they're going to change the world. It's exhilarating and a little terrifying; the Oval Office and late-night phone calls; the power coursing through his pen onto a new white page.

He doesn't think of Sam again until afterwards.

-

Afterwards turns into weeks, and Will is alone in the West Wing, so it appears. Him and his Rice Krispie Treats, and a bunch of interns, which is really neither better nor worse than being stuck with speechwriting staff who both hate him and can't write.

Except that yeah, the Speechwriting Staff quitting over Will being hired makes it worse, and Toby feeling sorry enough for him to _lie_ about it makes it near unbearable.

Well, it's looking like one of those kinds of weekends. And then Sam kills his campaign on national television, and though Will might not be running it anymore, it was his campaign until a little while ago, and also he's pretty fond of Sam. While simultaneously wanting to use the borrowed tie to strangle him.

"Sam."

"Will."

"What did you just do?"

"I'm sorry?"

" '_Send me to Congress, and mine will be the first yea vote cast.'?"_

"Yeah."

"Are you _trying _to lose?"

"If I do lose, I'm not going to hurt the President's tax plan while I do it."

"This has nothing to do with the fact that they didn't tell you what they were doing?"

"No."

"Or the fact that you're pretty pissed at Scott for asking you to come out against _against_ a plan that you're not only in favour of, but in fact a chief architect of the policy?"

"No, Will. It was the right thing to do."

"Sam."

"Listen. Whichever way this goes… I'm not coming back, okay?"

"Sam!"

"No, listen. I'm not… You're doing great."

"And I told you that I wasn't here to replace you. I told the President that, I told Toby that, I told CJ and Josh and… I asked you!"

"I know that you did."

"And you said, and I clearly remember this, you said that it was okay. That you didn't blame me, that you had given Toby your okay before he asked Leo. Although, given your track-record on lying to me about conversations with Toby perhaps I should have suspected that you'd…"

"Will!"

"Yeah?"

"You're gonna be fine."

"Sam…"

"Better than fine. I heard your speech, remember?"

"If I hadn't asked…"

"You didn't ask. I offered. I gave you my name. There's no blame."

"Except that the President still regularly forgets my name, the speechwriting staff quit to avoid working with me, and Toby hates me for making you go to California to lose an election."

"I haven't lost yet. Toby doesn't hate you. You'll get new speechwriting staff. The President didn't remember my name until Illinois. You're there on your own merits, nothing to do with me, and I'm here on my own choice, nothing to do with you. Stop beating yourself up."

"I can't persuade you to come back?"

"No."

"Did you tell…?"

A voice somewhere near Sam yells. "Sam!"

"Did I tell him?" Sam asked. "Yeah."

"And the President?"

"I'll tell the President… I'll tell him when it matters that I'm telling him."

"Sam."

"Sam!" Toby called again.

"I gotta go. My new campaign manager is yelling for me."

There was a scuffling sound. "Will?" Toby asked.

"Yes. Did you steal Sam's phone?"

"Yes. How's it going?"

"With my interns and an unexpected tax-plan announcement?"

"With that, yes."

"It's going great, Toby, how about you?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're going to lose."

"Yeah. Does Sam know that?"

"He doesn't want me to tell him. So we don't, okay? We're going to see this out."

Sam had asked him to look out for Toby, and now Toby was asking him to look out for Sam, and he was still alone in the White House. The whiteboard was covered in facts that he was trying to learn for the first time, when his boss had been on it for months; there were pieces of paper all over the conference table, none of which had anything approaching usable speeches on them. It was almost on him to ask whether this was yet more hazing, like goats and bicycles and posters in the office.

Sam spoke in the background. "Give me the phone back."

"You don't need the phone," Toby answered. "You need to get back out and talk to people. Shake hands. Smile."

"Will…"

"Will's on top of it," Toby answered. Without any of the brusque reassurance he used talking to Will, just certainty.

"I know that," Sam replied, equally calm. Another scuffle. Then, Sam, louder again, "Will."

"Yeah?" Will said, already hearing how the broken speeches needed to be reshaped. The seeds of something better to be teased out of the chaos.

Sam smiled, Will could hear it. "Go do your job."

* * *

FIN 


End file.
